No. 2 Ohio State Routs No. 11 Florida 5-2

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes had a test today as they had to face their second top-15 team in three days after an energetic but tense 4-3 win over No. 6 Texas A&M on Friday. However, the team never looked worse-for-wear as they took care of business today, defeating the No. 11 Florida Gators 5-2. The Buckeyes remain undefeated on the season and are now 8-0 on the year, while the Gators drop to 4-2. The Buckeyes have now played three straight ranked opponents as well, putting them at 3-0 on the year against nationally ranked teams.

The Buckeyes had their toughest doubles contest of the season to this point, but had multiple opportunities to break and eventually took advantage of them. Mikael Torpegaard and Martin Joyce had a challenge in facing the No. 5 doubles team in the nation for the second time this season. However, they showed why they’re undefeated in doubles, defeating Duarte Vale and McClain Kessler 6-1. The Buckeyes had their first setback of the season in doubles, as JJ Wolf and John McNally were defeated by Oliver Crawford and Alfredo Perez 6-4. After going down two breaks at 1-5, Wolf and McNally were able to break back and bring it to 4-5, but it wasn’t quite enough. This left it to Matt Mendez and Hunter Tubert on court 3. At 4-4, Mendez and Tubert had three breaks to serve for match on court 3, but couldn’t convert. The same situation happened at 5-5, and the Buckeyes didn’t make the same mistake twice as they broke on the first break point. Continuing to show their reliability at the No. 3 spot, Mendez and Tubert held serve to win the match 7-5 and the doubles point for the Buckeyes. Mendez and Tubert lead the Buckeyes with five dual match doubles wins.

Despite the final scoreline, the Buckeyes were able to pretty quickly clinch the match in singles. McNally had a slow start in his match after coming off his loss from Friday, quickly giving up a break in the first set to be down 3-1. From there however, he quickly broke back and never looked back, defeating No. 43 Vale 6-3, 6-2 and getting the first singles point for the Buckeyes. Torpegaard soon thereafter defeated No. 9 Perez 6-2, 6-2 to make it 3-0 Buckeyes, and was comfortably ahead the whole match. This puts Torpegaard at 6-0 on the season, and he has the most dual match singles wins of any Buckeye so far this season. The clinching point came from none other than Alex Kobelt, who stepped up for the Buckeyes while Tim Seibert was out today. The redshirt sophomore showed a strong forehand and a strong serve as he defeated Kessler 6-4, 6-4.

The teams elected to play the rest of the matches out. These matches showed that it could have been much closer had McNally, Torpegaard, and Kobelt not earned two-set wins. The Gators were able to get a point on the board with a win from No. 7 Ingildsen, who defeated Wolf 7-5, 6-4. They then brought the score up to 4-2 with a win from Andres Andrade against Kyle Seelig. Seelig, who at one point was down 3-6, 1-3, put on an impressive comeback to win the second set 6-4. However, he couldn’t overcome a 9-6 lead from Andrade in the super tiebreaker and lost 10-8. Last to finish was Martin Joyce, who showed a strong serve and an ability to finish in two tiebreaker sets, defeating Crawford 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5). This gave the Buckeyes their fifth point of the match, bringing the final score to 5-2.

After having nine straight matches at the Varsity Tennis Center over January and February, the Buckeyes now will have to get use to travelling as they only play at the VTC two times over the rest of February and March. They first travel to Seattle to partake in the ITA National Team Indoor Championship on February 16 in Seattle, Washington. They then will travel to South Bend to face No. 22 Notre Dame on February 25 before returning to Columbus for a match against their first Big Ten opponent of the season in Penn State on February 28. From there, they will have to travel for seven of their next eight matches.